The Drive...

Americans from all walks of life and ethnic backgrounds signed up for the Armed Forces.

Over one million African Americans served during the war – though segregation and

prejudice forced them into support positions until near the end of the war. Women joined

the fight too. During the war, over 250,000 women served in many roles - throughout the

world – such as pilots, nurses and mechanics.

As the U.S. built its fighting forces, the President called upon the nation’s manufacturing

might to build the implements of war needed to fight the enemy.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

May 2, 1943

“We shall need everything that we have and everything that our allies have to defeat the

Nazis and the Fascists in the coming battles on the continent of Europe and the Japanese

on the continent of Asia and in the islands of the Pacific.”

The U.S. mobilization for war stands among the monumental achievements in American

history. In record time, the U.S. economy was completely transformed from producing

peacetime goods to maximum war production. FDR established the War Production

Board – the WPB – to direct the effort, and he set demanding goals.

President Franklin Roosevelt

State of the Union Address

January 6, 1942

In this year, 1942, we shall produce 60,000 planes, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 anti-aircraft

guns. We shall build eight million tons of merchant ships.

Nationwide drives were organized to collect scrap iron and tin, rags, paper - even cooking

fat - to be recycled into war supplies. And metals and other raw materials were diverted

for use in war production. New defense plants and shipyards sprang-up seemingly

overnight and existing factories were converted to military manufacturing. Industrialist

Henry J. Kaiser became a national hero as his shipyards built nearly 1500 “Liberty

Ships.” Henry Ford’s massive assembly lines turned out a B-24 bomber every 63

minutes and the nation’s railroads made delivering raw materials and war supplies their

top priority.

After a decade-long depression, war production revitalized the U.S. economy. Suddenly,

a nation with too few jobs had to work overtime to supply the Allied effort. As the

nation’s men left for the fighting front, women joined the workforce to fill the vacant

positions. Many of them took jobs in the defense industry making "Rosie the Riveter" a

legend of wartime production.